VX2235wm

When it comes to price versus quality, Viewsonic come to the party time and time again with great monitors at a low price. The VX2235wm is a 22in widescreen LCD monitor with a native resolution of 1680x1050 pixels. During our testing, we found no problems at all when it comes to image quality, but the integrated speakers were rather average. When you take the price into consideration, this attractive unit is easily one of the best value-for-money buys on the market.

We put the Viewsonic through its paces by running an exhaustive set of tests using DisplayMate Video Edition at a resolution of 1680x1050 pixels. DisplayMate has a multitude of test images that are designed to push a monitor to its limits and reveal any inherent flaws. The geometry and distortion tests were executed perfectly, while the sharpness and resolution tests showed no signs of distortion in either the vertical or horizontal axis. The colour and greyscale tests were equally impressive with no signs of noise or image aberrations and the uniformity tests were flawless.

The horizontal viewing angle displayed no colour shift for 170 degrees and the vertical was also excellent at 160 degrees. The VX2235wm had no backlight bleeding and the colour reproduction was superb without any over-saturation. We conducted speed and gaming tests to check for ghosting and to ensure its reported 5ms response time was accurate. We found no ghosting to speak of, nor anything that would indicate anything less than excellent performance all-round.

Similar to the current trend in LCD televisions, the Viewsonic has a piano black bezel and stand. This is broken up by a single metallic silver stripe finish down the middle of the stand. Below the bezel is two five watt speakers hidden behind a grill and the rear sports connections for DVI-D and VGA. The VX2235wm can accept both DVI-D and VGA D-Sub inputs at the same time from two sources, with a switching button that allows the user to change between each simply and easily. PC and notebook users will appreciate this handy feature.

The calibration options are comprehensive and offer more than just the standard brightness, contrast and colour controls. In addition to these basic options there are also more specific colour calibration tools that change the colour temperature or choose a specific colour space to suit your needs. There are also automated colour management systems and seven preset colour modes.

Unfortunately, this unit fails miserably in the sound department. The included speakers are sub-standard and, even at its highest volume, not very loud. The produced sound is reasonable but with the serious lack of volume, they become useless for many consumers.

Overall, the Viewsonic VX2235wm is an excellent 22in widescreen monitor at a very decent price. It is hard not to be impressed with the overall picture quality but the integrated speakers leave a lot to be desired. When it comes to value for money, we have no problem recommending this unit.